Our first day in Chiang Mai we had no plans so we ended up being offered, complimentry from our hotel, to take us around to see some of the local handicraft factories. We were shuttled between the different factories/shops in a van, but they were no more than 300m apart. First stop was a silk factory. They showed us silk production, from the larva eggs to moths, extracting the silk from their cocoons, and a weaving loom. The 10 minutes of explaination was quite interesting, but before we realized the learning segment was over we were scurried into their showroom, which was at least five times the size of the factory. We scanned over thier various items for sale from silk scarves, suits and ties, pillow cases and bed spreads and decided that there were no
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